Help From Above

 

Text: Hebrews 4:12-16

Focus: Jesus the High Priest

Function: to help people see how Jesus is there to help us

¹²Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. ¹³And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.

¹⁴Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. ¹⁵For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. ¹⁶Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

I am perplexed at times while reading the book of Hebrews because it is full of mystery about the Jewish tradition. It is a letter written to Jewish believers who are scattered across the world and it is meant to help them understand the depth and width of this mutual salvation that we enjoy. Because of its Jewish tradition, it takes a little bit to understand some of the mystery that is written into the book.

The passage starts out with the word, “Indeed.” It is a conclusion to the previous passage that states it means this:...

And the “This” that it means is that the people of the first covenant missed it because they were ignorant of God’s word.

And because of their ignorance, they missed the blessing of God. It is important to know that while they were ignorant, they were also, at many times, very religious people. But the Prophet Amos said this about their worship in Amos 5:

²¹I hate, I despise your festivals,
    and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
²²Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
    I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
    I will not look upon.
²³Take away from me the noise of your songs;
    I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
²⁴But let justice roll down like waters,
    and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

The reason was because they were noisy in their worship, but in their practice, they did not take care of the poor, the refugee, the outcast.

But, God has not left us ignorant. I love this verse because it says that the Word of God is alive!

It is alive. I remember when I was a new Christian reading it through for the first time, it just melted my heart as I saw the wisdom given to me in its pages. It drew me close to God and it taught me how to begin to learn to love one another the way Jesus loves us.

So, he says that the Word of God is alive. John 1 tells us that Jesus is the Word of God. The Logos of God. Jesus is the image of God that we can picture, see, and understand.

Here in this passage in Hebrews in its mysterious language, and also in John 1 in its mysterious language, we see the image of God that God wants us to understand is made perfect in the image of Jesus that is given to us through the life, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And there is a purpose given to us in the passage about why God became human in Jesus the Nazarene, the purpose is so that we can have someone to compare ourselves to, an ideal, a perfection that we can strive to attain.

Not just to have something to do with our lives, and it doesn’t say it in this passage, but Jesus says it often enough during His ministry, but our purpose is to help God bring about the Kingdom of God in this world. “Thy Kingdom Come. Thy Will be Done, in earth as it is in heaven...,” we pray every week.

When we pray that, we confess that we are people who are aligned with that purpose.

And because we are aligned with the purpose we prepare ourselves for the work that God has called us to do. It is the work of contradicting the narrative of this world which is to fight everybody to survive, or to live in the peace of Christ, loving our neighbors as much as we love ourselves.

Jesus’ showed us how to live and to die, for that matter. Jesus’ life exposes our own weakness.

My dear Aunt, a strong Christian, keeps posting these memes about how illegals are bad and I keep posting back to her that Jesus calls them “neighbor” and expects the same from us. She is patriotic to the extent that it overwhelms her sense of Christian duty, it seems to me, a phenomena we call Christian Nationalism instead of NT Christianity.

And she is beginning to get it. Jesus was an immigrant and a refugee, he fled political persecution. The way we treat refugees is the way we treat Jesus according to Matthew 25. And for those who believe in hell, the passage about the sheep and the goats is a reference, FOR THEM, about where their eternal destiny is.

The word of God exposes the true intent of the heart. Jesus’ life and teaching expose what is in our heats as well. And it is important that our worship be genuine, filled with love, even for the least of these in order for it to not be a clanging gong.

He gives a warning in the verse that seems to indicate that God knows the thoughts and the intents of our hearts. Jesus’ loving response to people should inform the way we respond to others.

And the passage focuses us on Jesus. Jesus as the great High Priest. He gives us help from above and it is genuine because He too, was human, and knows the human condition.

We believe that Jesus still exists to day as an High Priest who sits or stands at the Throne of God and makes intercession on behalf of the saints. He prays for us, forgives us and justifies us through His eternal sacrifice in the presence of the Trinity of God.

And the passage says that He is an high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses.

Jesus, according to the passage, experienced the same temptations and trials that we experience and in all of that He did not sin.

The word for sin here is important. It means, He didn’t miss the mark. It was also an idiom that we could also translate, “He passed the test.”

He faced evil that was unfair and corrupt. That evil mercilessly killed Him by torture and He did not respond, the text says, with evil.

He forgave the ones who murdered Him. Murdered Him. Can we forgive as well?

We want justice and revenge. But the scriptures say that Justice belongs to God and that God will judge fairly in the end.

I hope and trust in that. But remember, at the end, when it comes time for those people who murdered Him to be held accountable for their actions, Jesus forgave them already.

What a powerful image we have. He was tested to the point of death and He did not retaliate but instead is leaving justice up to God.

May we live up to the standard that Jesus has set for us and live lives loving and forgiving.

I do remember that only Jesus was Jesus and only Jesus is perfect. That is what grace is all about. But Jesus first gives us an ideal to strive for, Himself, and then gives us the power of the Holy Spirit to fulfill our mission while we are still living here on planet earth.